Welcome to Boxer & Rice

The phone had been Bulma’s idea, and Vegeta had hated it from day one.

“Well, what if there’s an emergency and I need to get a hold of you?” she had argued, and Vegeta had rolled his eyes, pointing out that he spent most of his time at home, anyway—he wasn’t exactly difficult to reach.

But Bulma had insisted. And so he had wound up with a nightmarish device that buzzed and beeped with every irrelevant notification and message at all hours of the day. Vegeta had questioned the purpose of at least half the pre-loaded applications ( what the hell was a Facebook? ), but Bulma had insisted it was the bleeding edge of communication technology—the CapsulePhone5, she called it, ~still in beta-testing, anyone would kill to have this model, Vegeta!~

Vegeta had been quick to point out that his old scouter had a faster processing speed, and better voice recognition software, and most impressively, a functioning ansible. This phone thing couldn’t even read a damn power level. Bulma, of course, had politely listened to his user feedback, and then told him, over text message, to shut the hell up.

So he kept the phone.

And mostly, he ignored it. Exactly as he was ignoring it now—he had left it on the main console in the gravity room, and though he thought he might have heard it buzz a couple times during his morning workout, he paid it no attention. Likely nothing urgent, he assumed. Probably just Bulma texting him something inane, or Trunks asking for something, or, god forbid, Kakarot sending him foolish “memes.” Nothing that couldn’t wait.

It wasn’t until hours later, as he wound down from his training, that he finally acknowledged it. After powering down the gravity generator and taking a long swig from his water bottle, he grabbed the phone off the console and swiped past the lock screen. Two text messages from Bulma were waiting for his attention:

*Bulma:
how are things at home?
miss you ;)

Vegeta cocked an eyebrow. Somehow he could vanish with Whis and Kakarot for months at a time for training, and Bulma seemed to pay it no mind—but when she was away for less than two weeks on business, that warranted a “miss you” and a crude approximation of a wink?

He quickly responded with 'Everything here is fine,' before he abandoned the phone again on the console. He turned away to grab a towel he had brought in earlier, and was just beginning to wipe the sweat off his bare neck and shoulders when the phone buzzed again. He shot a quick glance at the screen. Two more messages from Bulma:

*Bulma:
that's good
wish you were here

Then she punctuated with a kiss emoji.

Vegeta had only begun to tap out a reply when a third message followed, this time with a photo attached. An image of Bulma grinned up at him from the screen, her eyes half-lidded, her teeth biting seductively into her lower lip. Her top was pushed up over the swell of her breasts, one hand teasing at an exposed nipple.

Now she certainly had his attention.

'Very lewd,' Vegeta responded.

The phone buzzed again.

*Bulma:
Well?
Aren't you gonna show me yours??

Another winking face followed.

A searing heat crawled up Vegeta’s neck and burned across his cheeks. He took another deep swig from his water bottle but his mouth remained painfully dry.

'You’re depraved,' he replied, stubbornly trying to ignore the fact that he was already semi-hard from her photo alone.

*Bulma:
it's rude not to share, Vegeta

Vegeta paused before tapping at the screen again. She knew what she was doing. She had issued him a challenge, and backing down simply wouldn’t do. He could either give in to her lecherous demand, or admit defeat.

Damn her cunning.

Vegeta fumbled with the phone for several moments before finding the camera. He struggled for several more moments as he glimpsed down at an unflattering reflection of himself, unsure how to switch from the forward-facing camera. He tapped experimentally at several meaningless icons until finally the angle switched, showing the tiled floor beneathhim. He swallowed dryly, and reached down the front of his shorts with one hand.

His erection sprang easily from the spandex material, and with a few rough strokes, he quickly reached his full length. With his other hand, he angled the phone downward and watched as the camera sharpened into crisp focus. The dim, red lighting of the gravity room was less than ideal, but it would have to do. He gripped the base of his cock in one hand, and grit his teeth before he hit the shutter button with his other.

It took several more embarrassing moments before he figured out how to send the damn photo, a task made no easier by the insistent, distracting throbbing of his dick. As he finally hit “send,” he wondered exactly how much Bulma got off on this kind of torment.

Several minutes passed with no reply, and Vegeta bristled at her silence. Maybe this was part of her game—some kind of humiliation kink? Or had his hasty erotic photography simply not met her standards? Yes, the lighting had been terrible, he would concede that much, but—

The phone vibrated in Vegeta’s hand. His gaze flicked down toward the screen, and he immediately felt his core liquify in horror at the message waiting for him.

*Kakarot:
:O :O :O

No, he didn’t, he couldn’t have —Vegeta frantically tapped back through his message history, and saw that he had never even sent the photo to Bulma, somehow he had gone back into his most recent contacts and—

Well, the evidence was right in front of him. Despite his screen brightness being set to its absolute minimum, he could feel the pixels of Kakarot’s text message searing painfully into his retinas.

~FUCK.~

Vegeta’s first instinct was to vaporize the phone, then find the Capsule Corp server the photo was stored on and destroy that, too. Instead, he furiously fired off two more texts:

'That was a MISTAKE and DELETE THAT IMMEDIATELY' (but in his panic failed to notice that the phone auto-corrected his desperate key-smashing so that MISTAKE somehow became MEAT STEAK).

Goku responded with a laughing face emoji.

Forget destroying the phone, Vegeta thought. He was simply going to have to murder Kakarot instead.

He began to craft another reply, trying to ignore the way his ears rang like he had just received a blow to the head, how he could almost feel his blood plasma reaching its boiling point.

'This isn’t FUNNY, that photo wasn’t intended for you,' he responded.

'haha yeah i kinda figured,' was Goku’s nonchalant reply.

Vegeta didn’t have time to reply before Goku followed up with a winking emoticon. The embarrassment that knotted up Vegeta’s insides was immediately dispelled, burned away by a pure, incandescent rage.

'FUCK YOU KAKAROT,' he texted, and threw the phone down on the gravity console. He huffed in frustration when it didn’t shatter into a thousand pieces as he had hoped.

He turned away, dragging a hand down his face as he let out a groan. He wondered how feasible it would be to simply lie down on the tiled floor of the gravity room and die there. Anything to avoid an encounter with Goku ever again—how was he supposed to face his rival after this? Just thinking about Goku seeing him like that, having shared something so base and perverse—

He grabbed the phone off the console, and texted the photo to Bulma, double- and triple-checking the message before he hit send. Hopefully that would be the end of that. He had no intention exchanging anything else with her—not after he had fucked up so thoroughly.

He turned the phone off after that, and tried to ignore how stubbornly hard he still was.
~
The next morning, Vegeta found that dragging himself out of bed seemed like an insurmountable task. His first instinct had been to pull his sheets over his head and simply cease to exist, but he eventually decided against that—he would seek out refuge in the gravity room instead, and try to work out his humiliation in the brutal crush of artificial gravity.

This time he didn’t bring his phone. He left it on his bedside table, ignoring the three missed messages from Goku that were blinking expectantly for him at the top of the screen.

When he arrived in the GR, he skipped his warm-up and immediately cranked the power to a punishing 500G. The instant pain that threatened to pull apart his tendons and shatter his joints was almost a relief, as if the pressure were enough to literally crush the embarrassment out of him.

It wasn’t, but it was a welcome distraction nonetheless.

He worked through his routine methodically. The hum of the generator and the barrages from the training bots coaxed Vegeta into a steady rhythm of leaping and dodging and blasting, his body running more on sheer muscle memory than any conscious direction. He allowed himself to slip completely into the flow of his training, focusing on nothing but his own pulse and ki, and the slowly building ache in his muscles.

He was blindsided when an unwelcome and all-too-familiar presence abruptly appeared behind him.

Vegeta’s reaction was automatic—a blast of ki burst from his palms as he spun around to face his intruder. Goku didn’t even have time to pull his fingers away from his forehead before Vegeta’s ki-blast slammed into his torso, throwing him against the GR’s central column.

Vegeta’s lips pulled back to bare his teeth.

“YOU!” he snarled, and immediately began to stalk towards Goku.

Goku had landed on the floor, and was leaning heavily against the GR console for balance as he brushed at the singed material of his gi where Vegeta had blasted him. “Wow, Vegeta, what was that for?”

"Did I give you permission to come in here? ” Vegeta barked at him. “Did you really think I would want you here, especially after—after—”

Goku strained against the gravity as he brought himself to stand at full height. “Look, if you’re upset about yesterday—”

The last of sentence was knocked out of him as Vegeta twisted his fists into Goku’s shirt and slammed him against the room’s central column. “One more word out of your mouth, Kakarot, and I swear to— ”

“Look, forget about it, okay?” Goku pleaded, lifting his palms up in submission. “I didn’t come here to talk about that—I deleted the photo, I promise! I just thought—we could spar? I texted you a bunch of times to ask you but you didn’t answer!”

Vegeta tightened his grip on Goku’s gi. “Did it not occur to you that I was deliberately ignoring your messages?”

Goku reached a hand behind his head and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Well, yeah… but I was hoping maybe you just hadn’t seen them?”

“You’re an idiot.”

Despite the insult, Goku grinned. “Maybe. But at least I’m bright enough not to accidentally send naughty photos to people, eh?”

Vegeta immediately swung his fist at Goku’s face, but Goku blocked the punch with his palm just before it made contact.

“Sorry, sorry,” he apologised, but Vegeta couldn’t ignore the way Goku's grin still tugged at the corners of his lips. “I’m just joking, I’m sorry. But hey, clearly you do have some steam you need to blow off. What do you say—one quick fight and I’ll leave you alone.”

Vegeta briefly considered strangling Goku instead, but ultimately decided that his offer to spar might be more appealing. Perhaps pummelling Goku until he was purpled with bruises was closer to the type of catharsis Vegeta needed.

Finally, Vegeta released his grip on Goku.

“Fine,” he muttered, turning away. “But I’m cranking the gravity up by another hundred G’s.” He cast Goku a sidelong glare. “For punishment.”

Goku shrugged. “Fine with me.”

Vegeta keyed in the command to the console, intensifying the gravity and disabling the training bots. A computerised voice confirmed the protocol before another hundred G’s of weight pressed down on them. Vegeta grit his teeth against the pull of the gravity and he backed away from Goku, assuming a defensive stance.

Goku began to fall into a similar stance, but Vegeta noticed him hesitating, glancing around as if distracted.

“You know, the lighting in here isn’t very flattering,” Goku blurted.

Vegeta briefly faltered in his defensive pose, cocking an eyebrow. “What the hell are you talking about Kakarot?”

“The weird red lighting in here,” Goku explained, gesturing around the room, “I could tell this is where you took the photo—it doesn’t do anyone any favors, you know? Maybe next time you’re doing naughty photos try the bedroom, or the bathroom maybe? I dunno, just a suggestion.”

Vegeta could feel his temples suddenly throb as every one of his blood vessels threatened to burst. Was this seriously happening? Was Kakarot seriously giving him an aesthetic critique of his fucking dick pic?

“Oh, my apologies , Kakarot,” he seethed. “I’m so sorry my photography didn’t meet your standards—did your dick not get hard enough because the lighting in here was too dim? Is that it?”

This time it was Goku who seemed taken aback. His eyes widened as he began to stammer uselessly under Vegeta’s withering glare.

“Hey, that’s not—I didn’t—”

Dim, red lighting aside, Vegeta could swear he could see Goku’s cheeks flushing. Vegeta felt sickly pleased by his reaction.

“No need to protest, Kakarot. Next time I send private photos to my wife, I’ll make sure to run them by you first, since you’re the expert apparently!”

“Vegeta—” Goku choked.

Goku’s embarrassment spurred Vegeta—it felt good to have taken back the upper hand, to have transferred his own humiliation back to Goku. Vegeta wanted nothing more than to really lay into him, keep going until Goku was squirming in discomfort before him— no need to worry, Kakarot, he wanted to go on, next time I’ll send you a high definition panorama of my fucking cock so you can see every detail of every vein, every glistening pixel of—

Vegeta stopped himself in mid thought, ignoring how he was quickly burning up with rage and spite and something else entirely.

“Never mind, Kakarot,” he finally hissed. A crackling aura snapped into existence around him as his eyes began to flash an icy blue. “Are you going to fight me, or not?”

Vegeta watched as Goku swallowed, but didn’t avert Vegeta’s gaze. He followed Vegeta’s lead, and quickly ascended into the first Super Saiyan form.

Vegeta threw the first punch.